Tag Archives: justice

Will you just look at him?! A little cock around a chicken coop, roughing up his feathers, in a company of obese pigeons.

And what is THIS: A smile?! His life is “six business days” away from altering its course: from the heart-breaking mediocracy of it to the new pattern of brutality — of evil begets evil. It’s at the mercy of some randomly selected buggers like me, so tired and overworked that we are no longer able to experience a patriotic high from this pain-in-the-ass civic duty; or from the frilly concepts of justice and what’s right. We are: The Who’s Who, and what of it?!

We’ve all got our ideas, that’s for sure! Our principles! I stand by this, I swear by that; I vow, I believe. We pump up our chest. We force our eyes to glimmer with conviction. But what of it? And who is he who aims at human life?

Okay, get up! The judge walked in. Get up! Don’t waiver but don’t be cocky either. The white folks — they don’t like that. Stand up!

Oh, man.

This. Blows.

In my belief, there used to be much more to breathing. But slowly, it has whittled down to simple truth — not even fairness, but truth — while all the rest has fallen by the wayside. Still, it is more than I can say about some people!

Like this loudmouth fat girl I haven’t seen here, on the first day. Today, in clunky, loud rain boots with worn out heel caps, she marches up and down the marble floors, with People Magazine under her armpit. (She’s interested in People.) And meaning to be seen and heard while on her cell phone, she flaunts those words that show no sympathy, no modesty and no distress to any of the details of today — but having “to get outta here”. She “can’t afford this”! She “has no tolerance for shit like that”! And obviously, she cannot manage to allow for the rest of us to wait in silence. Now — is her time; her stage. And we, the people, listen:

“Yeah, like, that would be the biggest tragedy, right? I mean, this jury duty — SUCKS! It’s, like, the worst thing that has happened to me, EVER!” A hair flip of vaguely red and stringy hair — and she suddenly reminds of somebody who once aroused the same aftertaste of nausea in my trachea. But who?

And this little man is smiling now. You’re scared shitless, aren’t you, kid? What have you got besides hormonal bravado and a shitty cover-up of fear. For this is not a smile of someone hopeless; but neither is he smiling to be liked by us.

They must’ve cleaned him up the night before and given him this bulky dress shirt of some unmemorable color. As if not to offend. Not to arouse all the self-righteous and the ones who have been programed by a life of fear. Whenever he turns his head, the collar sways around his skinny, post-pubescent neck like untied sails around a mast. He’s small. He’s tiny. He is a fucking kid!

Manslaughter. Ain’t that a fucked-up thing?!

Mi abuelo (I miss the old fuck!): He wouldda given me a smackin’ for haunching over right now.

“I didn’t come to this good country to see my first grandson groveling in front of white people!”

Don’t grovel, man!

His skin is ashen and uneven. I wonder where he spent last night…

The truth is: I am clueless. My knowledge of the judicial system is laced with fear, and it is mostly defined by bad cop shows produced by Hollywood (but shot in New York City — for that “edgier”, “more urban” look). Was he allowed to sleep at home, while waiting for this trial? When was the last time he squeezed the hips of this one girl who keeps coming around and holding his skinny, shaven head in that flat space along her chest while her gigantic breasts fall to the sides, right after he is done? When was the last time he was kissed and kept his eyes open, focused on the girl’s birthmarks and her taste?

When did the young abandon their reckless curiosity and started chasing justice?

Not guilty! Innocent, Your Honor!

Aw, shit! I guess it’s not my time yet. FUCK.

My god, you poor kid! What little you have had, in life! And you’re about to lose that too!

No, wait! I can’t be wondering these things! This man-child KILLED somebody! Sure, “allegedly”, but killed. “Allegedly,” he’d killed somebodies, actually! Not one but two, and one — was a young woman.

There is an old man glueing words together on the first panel of us. He’s speaking slowly, voice quivering, possessing no knowledge on how to use a mic. The poor soul can barely speak English:

“I… eh… I’m… bery scared, um… guns.”

My lawyer’s taking notes. He better be dismissing this old chink!

How have we come to this? What does this say, about us, when we no longer find the roots of it, the causes; but only our objections and dismissals. I stand by this, I vow to that. And rather than examining the history of violence — what makes us snap, then heal but harden? — we carry on imposing more violence. We call it “retribution”. The “crime” — to “punishment”.

These somebodies were somebodies’ beloveds, I remember. “Allegedly.”

The fat girl is dissecting People, in the row ahead of mine. Shit. Of whom does she remind me?

“Beyond the reasonable doubt.” That’s funny asking this complaining bunch out here to be reasonable!

The mic is passed to the lanky academic in wrinkled clothes, who’s sitting in the front row of the panel. It’s happening at the request of the stenographer: A visibly unhappy woman who rolls her eyes in the direction of the judge, for every time she cannot hear a juror. A potential juror, sorry. The wrinkled man refuses to say one word and steps to the side. He walks in front of the long desk where the kid is now slumping forward, in his seat. The silence that takes up the auditorium is nosy, odd and angry. The man returns. Sits down. He shoots the kid a glance. He’s gloating. How hateful! How have we come to this?

The face that stands at the other end of a cocked gun gets down to basics. The winning arguments of life.

A kink in the armor: Is that his fault?

My turn.

Do I understand “the burden of having his guilt proved” to me — “beyond the reasonable doubt”?

Was it just her, or had life begun to feel like an army of ants crawling through one’s capillaries? Did enthusiasm eventually give room to tiredness, when overcrowded by one’s disappointments? She watched the cautionary tale of her mother’s wilted curiosity; sitting in the downward-turned corners of her mouth, waiting to expire, along with the last of her youth? Waiting —

Until There Was None.

If ever mother had the patience, the awareness and the discipline enough to write her autobiography — for, surely, she had the vanity enough! — that should’ve been its tittle. Until There Was None.

But the joy: Where had it gone from her? There would still be moments of visible glee, some days — a sort of tightly wound hysteria; the same inside job that made her mother’s face quiver and the loose skin of her arms shake after each gesture. She’d be like that in front of her girlfriends when seeking their alliance via pity; or in front of the 17th Century paintings in the galleries of Eastern Germany. (Then, she would always speak to Nola, lecturing, lying, not knowing how to stop.) The sight of it — Nola eventually found herself despising (in men especially, much later): of something pushing — being pushed — past one’s irritability, beyond the limit of tolerance and truth. Strained. Pushed. Perpetually trying.

Silence and walking away, to Nola, seemed easier. And it was reasonable, in theory, for people to coexist in a peaceful fulfillment of their basic needs. But then, they would always tangle themselves up in the ideas of the pursuit of their own happiness, where flaunting of entitlement and justice would become a sport. The calmness of a grateful life had long surpassed her mother — that woman was way, way far down the line. And all there was to live by — was a long list of her grievances and other people’s debts.

“You’re just like your father!” her mother threw at Nola, as if being calm and good was somehow indecent. Once Nola turned twelve, however, there wouldn’t be much left to hurl at her expense. Because before, when the two women found themselves alone in the house, mom reached for anything to throw: her father’s rain boots, the ribbed hose from the Soviet-made (read: nearly useless) washing machine; wet laundry; mom’s patent leather belt from the fur coat that she’d demanded for her thirtieth birthday.

One time, unrooted by her madness, the woman tipped a pot of cold cabbage soup that had been sitting on the stove, waiting for her father’s dinnertime. She had been panicking in the kitchen — (mom always panicked, in the kitchen) — and when she found her words surpassing their brutality, she speedily relayed her gaze from one sharp object to the next; and after an unsuccessful search, reached up behind and steadily poured the pot of cold liquid onto Nola’s head. The slimy cabbage crawled under the collar, under the skin; and the orange, chalky layer of frozen oil tangled up in her hair and stayed there for weeks to come. When finally, most of the liquid hit the floor, Nola looked up: Not one, but two women stood there, drenched in terrible humiliation.

For the first time, that night, Nola had gone beyond forgiveness. Mom was susceptible to losing her control, she realized; but from some losses, one could not come back.

“You’re just like her father!”

Blunt objects or her mother’s limbs ungracefully ended their trajectories anywhere along Nola’s small body. If she tipped over, mom dragger her by the hair to rooms with better lighting, where harsher punishment ensued. While mother pushed and pushed and pushed — the child stood, or lied still, in silence. She learned to receive. She bared. She endured. And secretly she hoped that surrender would make her mother slow down. So visible was mother’s sorrow, so palpable — unhappiness, that from behind the raised arm with which Nola guarded softer places, she pitied her aggressor. She waited for the feeling of tremendous heat in all the new swellings. She’d welcome them, eventually giving herself over to resignation, and to sleep. A strange bliss would be found at the end of every horror. For one was never given more than one could handle.

In those days, Nola still could still portion out the world into manageable pixels. There would anger. Disappointments. A one unhappy woman. Through repetition, Nola learned that mother’s love was functioning through let down expectations. If one was loved by her — one owed her, forever. The closer Nola neared her own womanhood, the more difficult, the more unbearable would become that love — and debt; until one day, none in her family could ever able undo, unsay the things that they had thrown at each other, in an attack or self-defense. And in the loss of reason between all cause and effect, it would begin to feel like pure insanity.

And then, one summer, mom had admitted herself to a resort on the Ukrainian Republic’s shore, famous for housing patients of political insanity and tuberculosis. She dropped off Nola at the house of her in-laws, called up her husband and said that she had lost the sight of “her own woman”, and that she was going away, to find her self, for an indefinite amount of time.

Unheard of! Scandal! Her father’s mother ranted for about a week. But quite quickly, the old woman focused on saving the family’s face and made up more suitable stories about her daughter-in-law’s passage.

“Yeah, a bleeding ulcer. I know: that poor thing! She hadn’t eaten for a month!”

“A teacher’s conference attended by the Ministry of Education. She’s getting a Hero of Labor.”

But in her own house, behind her mother’s back, the old woman talked. She called her names for every single time she found Nola staring out of the window or writing letters to no address that mother left behind.

“A flea-ridden bitch — that’s what that woman is!” the old woman muttered on repeat, when she discovered a clump of tangled hair above the nape of Nola’s neck which Nola harvested for nearly a year by then. The knot had grown so large, that during the summer, she began to pin her grandma’s rhinestone brooches into it.

No remedy was masterful enough to get that thing out! Lord knows, grandma tried! The naked old woman labored and puffed in the wet steam of her bathhouse, her deflated breasts flapping above Nola’s shoulders, like freshly baked Georgian lavashes. After two hours of brushing, oiling, lathering; of pulling and of being pulled; of swearing, sweating, renouncing; and baring and receiving — the hair had to be cut out; and Nola walked away with half of it missing from the back of her head and a headache that took days to sleep off.

The story tilted then. Inside her family, she never would be able to find much calm. That night, unable to find a spot on her scalp that wasn’t raw and throbbing, with the face down in her pillow, Nola would begin to plot her own escape, with or without her hair.

And now, here it was: Her thick and magical, red hair! It had began to slip out of its follicles and clog up all the drains in the apartment; and after every shower, the water drained slowly, allowing for the soap scum to settle on the walls of her tub, like growth rings on a cut down tree.

Must color mother’s hair, she decided. The shower head was dripping at an even pace against the standing pool of water, in the bathroom. Mom lost all memory. Her dignity did not belong to her. It mattered to the living though — to those who were living, trying, still — so, Nola owed someone that.

But maybe, after all, justice was meant to sound like silence: Not a marathon of mauled over words she had previously thought were required for forgiveness, which, in the end, left her exhausted; her throat — dehydrated. Sarah despised feeling like that. Shouldn’t forgiveness be a higher ground, an emotion that belonged to the Magnanimous and the Wise? the, god bless them, Non-Mundane? Instead, she watched herself become a woman with a sloppy face, like a washed-up actress on the screen of a decade-long soap opera; and she paced her apartment, with the cell phone sweating against her ear (surely causing her cancer later in life!); and she worked laboriously — on forgiveness: Holding up each word in front of her torso, measuring it at the shoulder seams. Are the sleeves too long? Does it make her look fat? Is there anything — left to be done?

And neither did this newly discovered sound of justice resemble the forced catharsis she chased in sessions with her shrink. Where had she learned to expect these miraculous results? Must’ve been on another TV show, somewhat better written for a channel on which the actors were allowed to swear; and they could cry unattractively, while spraying spit and snot. (Later on, in interviews, these same actors would call the scenes “career defining”, while Sarah found them merely mocking humanity. Maybe, the problem was she was easily bored. Or, maybe, she understood too much.)

Sarah’s shrink was a poised woman who wore clothes from the manikins of Gap and Banana Republic — clothes that on Sarah always sat awkwardly and sadly, and made her apologize, for something, as she returned the silly plastic hangers to the changing-room girls: “Sorry…”; the poised woman who appeared immune from being shocked by the atrocities Sarah’s mother had interfiled into her life, like thin jackets of DVD’s with splatter horrors, hidden in a heart surgeon’s movie collection.

Nifty!

The word one would never use in Sarah’s own obituary was made for the lives of women like her PsyD. (Was the “p” silent, in that? She’d assumed that, but was embarrassed to ask. So, she began writing “Date with Sid” in her calendar, every Tuesday, even though the shrink’s name was Miranda. Miranda Bloom comma Sid.) Her Sid’s world — was nifty. Nifty piles of magazines in a fan formation of a peacock’s tail. Nifty little plastic plants, never wilting, lining the dust-less bookshelves with thick or thin books, always dense, whose reading made Sarah feel sleepy. Or apologetic. Even the clean-lined IKEA furniture — with unforgiving, hard surfaces and un-homey fabric patterns never to be found in her mother’s hysterical universe of tchotchkes — was nifty.

Sarah, unlike her Sid, could never be nifty. She tried, coming back for another round of awkward mirror reflections in dressing rooms of Banana Republic. But somehow, it just wouldn’t fit. Any of it. The store’s white lighting buzzed above and revealed Sarah’s old pockmarks from her 5th grade measles that her mother had decided to treat with holy water and sage. Embarrassed, Sarah would place the nifty cloths over a pile of colorful and bejeweled women’s underwear while avoiding the bored and slightly inquisitive stares of the salesgirls (“Sorry…”); and she’d swear to never come back.

But she would. After seeing another nifty woman laughing into the pinstriped bicep of a handsome man, on West End Avenue, she would attempt to shop for that life again, as if she hadn’t learned the lesson. The same way she hadn’t learned the lesson with Doug — a tenured professor of poetry on an epic journey of trying to leave his wife. She continued to come back to him. Maybe this time. They would carry on, until neither could recall whose turn it was to leave; who was doing the staying, the grasping, the scorning; and who would be in charge of forgiving.

“What do you want, ideally, from your life with Doug?” the shrink, looking particularly nifty, paced her words as Sarah thumbed the thinning threads of her sweater sleeves. She often wore her clothes to tatters, until the freckles of rolled lint began crowding her armpits and crotch; and she would be, again, embarrassed.

“Sorry?”

She didn’t expect the question. Between the two of them, Doug was the one with the plan. She — was the woman with none. She had met him at the library where she’d interned one summer, having purchased herself a Liberal Arts education that should’ve guaranteed her a teaching career, had Sarah really wanted one. Except that she didn’t. Hadn’t. She hadn’t thought it through, while in college; and she landed in the library; landed with an intention to leave, eventually — like those grayish-white swans that landed in her Ukrainian birth village one autumn; but miscalculated, stayed too long and froze during the first drop of the temperatures.

She had been following her fragmented thoughts about her Sid’s sexuality, when the question got hung in the air, each word — an ornament of paper-thin glass:

“What do you__want?__Ideally.__From your life__with Doug?”

“I wonder if she dates women?” Sarah had been thinking, while thumbing her sweater, about the Sid, based on the mere fact that the woman wore primarily flat shoes. Sarah stopped, having been caught red-handed. Red-thumbed.

She, of course, would never say this out loud. She — “of course!” — was much worldlier than that! But Sarah was also an immigrant’s daughter, not born in this country. (Which, to most, had made her worldly enough, but never exotic. “Exotic” belonged to girls from the countries that Americans favored for tourism: the tan and taut creatures from escapist lifestyles, and from the irresponsible summer flings of middle-aged men, bored in their marriages.) The dull shards of her mother’s old-fashioned prejudice still appeared in situations of ultra-Westernized pathos. Like this one: Sarah, on a very hard couch (surely earning herself cancer, later in life!); complaining, coming down hard, then taking cover from her shame in a numb silence of a spoiled brat; then, seeking refuge in a blunt stereotype with which her mother broke down the world.

No matter how hard she tried — to wring her hands, like that actress with the sloppy face — her shrink appeared unimpressed. Some of Sarah’s college classmates had spoken of how easily they gained alliances with their Sids. She, however, seemed incompetent at manipulation. Sarah was smart but not that smart. (Pretty, but not “exotic”.) And she wondered if her shrink was now judging her for the extramarital affair with Doug. (It was “extramarital” for Doug, not for Sarah. Sarah was just an outside participant, far from being an outside force. A third wheel, along for the ride, however crippled. “The woman with none.”)

Could it be the case that her shrink was now appalled and no longer impartial? Anything you say__or do__can__and will be__held against you?

Sarah never got the warning — from Miranda, the Sid.

Most of her teenage years, she had spend sorting out the world. The one of her mother’s — which she was obliged to automatically respect — confused her with its invasive familiarity; and she found herself pretending to not understand the cashiers at the Ukrainian deli, who attempted to speak to her in Russian. Somehow, they all knew her, even though their faces appeared no more familiar than the color-enhanced photographs of the folk dancers in the Times Travel Section, on Kiev. But they knew her: her name, her marital status (or the lack of one) and occupation. Or, they knew her mother. But did that at all justify their asking for her phone number so that they could fix her up “with a nice Russian boy” (which most of the time meant some young alcoholic heir of a local mechanic, who wore rhinestoned jeans and spent his inheritance on bottle services all over town)?

The new world — again, chosen by her mother who left the old country with five-year-old Sarah, in the name of a better life — that world seemed to be fast-talking and brash, filled with people who suffered from fashionable dis-eases, like “depression” and “ADD”; inflamed “sciaticas” and bored souls. The new world seemed allergic to sentiment. Even sex wasn’t safe here; and after her first “mature” (as her mother called it) experience, Sarah began to notice that sex came with shame. The smarter girls (often “exotic”) used it to negotiate free deals. Free meals. The dependent ones confused it for love, always making, forcing something out of it. And Sarah pitied the men who had been trained to get it, but not know what to do with it, afterward. So, it would sit — a pulsating blur in one’s living-room, underneath the soft light, waiting for the lovers to go through with it.

“You, Amerikan vemen,” her mother would say, in her reckless English, whenever she lectured the American womanhood in her daughter. “You dan’t know vat you vant.”

On her ride home on the A-train, Sarah had made a hobby out of watching the two cultures collide on the faces of Russian teenagers heading to Coney Island, late in the evening. She could always pick them out of a crowd: Their Western fashion looked slightly misfitted (far from nifty, and somehow wrong: “Sorry…”). And the words — “Whack!”, “Sick!”, “Fo’ sho’!” — came out unaccented phonetically, but their cadence was off. Something was off, always, in the immigrant world; but because she couldn’t name it, perfectly, precisely, to her American contemporaries, Sarah often found herself misunderstood. And silent.

“What’s your beef with yo’ mama, anyway, man?” J.C. always called her “man”. He was an artist living in Brooklyn Heights, and yes, they had tried sleeping together once. J.C. stopped it from happening though, when Sarah’s toes got tangled up in his socks while she tried to pull them off with her feet. (There were many ways to make sex feel pathetic. But a naked lover in white tube-socks — was the surest.)

“I wanna respect you, man…” he said looking down at Sarah from a propped-up pillow while she paved a trail of dry kisses in between his breasts and wondered about a sexier way to get rid of a curly hair, stuck in the back of her tongue. There was no such a way. So, she hooked her index finger, jammed it inside her mouth and began fishing for it.

By then, J.C. was already spewing out his theories on sexual politics. Sarah nearly gagged. He was first generation American born, from South America (so, did that even count?). She had assumed, at the time, that J.C. knew something she didn’t; so, she stopped. In those moments, it would’ve been less awkward — or less sad — to be one of those outspoken, brave American girls, with wild hair, layers of hippie jewelry and bright red lipstick, who had ready ideas on sexual liberation of women and mysterious comebacks via the ironic lyrics of Dylan or Ginsberg. Sarah was smart, but not that smart. Not nifty. Not “exotic”.

That night, she took the subway home, fishing for the curly hair in the back of her throat, in an empty train car. What was the big deal, she wondered. And why was it that men could so easily justify speaking on behalf of her conscience, her desires?

Doug had done it to her, for years: choosing for her from the menus of fancy restaurants. Over the years, their eateries would change, going from the dimly lit expensive places to the crowded diners with hairy waiters who emerged from the kitchen with stained pots of coffee. Doug had been on an epic journey to leave his wife. But maybe, Sarah just wasn’t enough of a reason.

Sorry…

Sarah leaned her forehead against the cold glass of the sliding doors and cried, quietly, finger hooking at the back of her throat.

Polish has always echoed of my native tongue, but with more softened corners of our consonants. And even if it flies out in a loud form — like from the disgruntled clerk at Warsaw’s Central Station who hollered at the group of passengers that included my old man (that bitch whose Soviet-inspired perm I could’ve easily clawed out if it weren’t for the plexiglass between us!) — this language still flows and gurgles the prettiest, for my ears. Within this week, Polish has become my path to lullabies; and now, I wish to learn it, so that I could always murmur its fairytales to my own sleepy firstborn.

Case in point: The lovebirds with whom I’m sharing this train car for the duration of the 7-hour ride from Gdansk to Warsaw — are quite quickly putting me to sleep after our first ten minutes together. Although I’m certain that the last three days of restless sleep that came from my fear of closing my eyes (so that I wouldn’t stop memorizing my father’s face, after a decade of our living in opposite hemispheres) have something to do with it, too. But during this entire trip through Eastern Europe, I have been thoroughly calmed into surrender by the trustworthy national temperament of the Poles. No other peoples I have ever encountered possess this much gentleness and grace (the Soviet-trained witch at the bus station who dared threatening my father’s dignity — is obviously excluded from this statement).

It is as if after centuries of oppression by every egomaniac who found this lovely country as the perfect place to start a war or their conquest of the world — after unthinkable tragedies the human race thought up and then imposed on these kind people — the good gods of this land have finally decided to protect them from all strife, until the next apocalypse that ends our civilization all together. As far as the Poles go, I think that they have suffered enough to possibly reach their nation’s limits of paid dues.

It must be why for days and miles (oops, sorry: kilometers) by now, I haven’t seen an unattractive native. The kiddos are doll-like, with their giant eyes and smooth foreheads inside the halos of colorful scarves and fur-trimmed hoods of coats: The beauty of their future generation must be the reward for all that suffering. The women are mesmerizing with their luminous faces (without make-up, in most cases) and those Slavic cheekbones carved out of marble by Michelangelo himself (for surely, that guy must be god’s personal architect, these days). The leftovers of the kitschy Soviet fashion are still occasionally noticeable on Warsaw’s streets: in leopard colored fur coats and hair beehives set into unmovable mounts with sparkly hairspray, a tooth comb a curling iron. And then, there are those women who suffer from the universal ailment of unhappy marriages and miserable living standards (those women age so fast!). Also, a few have fallen victim to the mass fad of perpetual smoking (although the young are still not showing the consequences of it). But for the most part, in their beauty, these women — are exceptional!

As for the Polish men, thus far I’ve found them wonderfully well-mannered, educated and non-aggressive. Like this specimen still cooing at his lovely in my train car: Incredibly gentle to the point of being effeminate, he keeps telling her the history of every local sight and landscape that we have passed behind our giant windows. At one point, he gets up, adjusts his tweed jacket (while being childlike and a little nerdy in his gestures); and then reveals two homemade sandwiches (oops, sorry: buterbrods) out of his shiny brown leather attache case. When he starts talking on his cellphone to confirm the schedule of their connecting train, he sounds exceedingly polite and almost bitchy. She giggles and looks at him sheepishly when he cuts off the customer service rep with his blade-like sarcasm. He looks back at her, now encouraged and twice the man, and pats the top of her knee.

These lovebirds have been cooing at each other ever since I’ve entered the railroad car. Between the two of them, she does most of the listening: With a blissful expression on her face whose only stunning characteristic lies in the constellation of her beauty marks, occasionally she slips in a timid compliment in between his never ending sentences, while he continues lecturing. He could be easily be an assistant professor or some brilliant history students at the top of his class. (Um. Sorry: faculte.) And when he delights her with his intellect, she breaks out into a ready laughter, too loud for her demure character.

Of course, were I to have my drathers, I would be sleeping in the dark and in utter silence. But one: It is the Eve of the New Year, after all (and the Poles are huge on celebrations — which must have something to do with their generosity, I suspect). Two: These kids are perfectly delightful. But even though they can’t remind me of my younger self (for I have never had a young romance), I always stand defenseless in the name of kindness, if not love.

Besides, I have been softened by the events of this week’s trip. The best, the smartest and the kindest man of my life — my father — has just departed from the coast of Gdansk:

The man to teach me my self-worth despite our sixteen-year long communication by phone and telepathically shared heartbeat. The one to always offer help and not keep tabs on my mistakes or moments of helplessness.

The first to show me that power lies in kindness and that in my forgiveness — happens love.

The parent from whom I have inherited my sense of justice and the pursuit of harmony, my reason, generosity, compassion; and the very essence of my spirit — has offered me the best week of my life.

And our reunion just so happened to unfold — on Poland’s graceful land.

I saw him nearing the intersection, about half a block away, on foot. At first, I watched him pass my car, along the pavement: An ordinary man, like so many others.

His hair and beard were completely white (and I’ve always found it impossible not to trust white-haired people, for they seemed so much wiser than others). So, immediately, I thought of him not as much as handsome but somehow dignified; trust-worthy. Surely, I thought, he knew something I didn’t.

He wore a pair of well-ironed black slacks and a white dress shirt, unbuttoned at its collar. A pair of polished, laced-up shoes and a yellow manila envelope under his armpit: But of course! He had to be an important somebody!

Maybe he was someone’s tax accountant, I thought. Or, a divorce attorney walking over the final papers to a drained, tragic face of some recently single mother.

The fact that he was passing a gas station specifically for cop cars helped my fantasy, too. I had just noticed it the other day: What looked like a parking lot behind a film production building was filled with the killer whales of LAPD being served by a single, rusty gas pump. I didn’t know that the same people granting us our justice also had to pump their own gas. It made sense, of course; but my initial assumption that they were tended to, by someone else, made the idea of my world slightly better. Or, more just.

(That’s when I looked away: I was waiting for the traffic light to change. It hadn’t yet.)

I had just passed that one crowded intersection where every LA egomaniac insisted on wedging in the giant ass of his unnecessary Hummer, thinking that the yellow light would last forever — just for him! Instead, he would get stuck there, right in the middle of the mess, blocking the rest of us with an awkward tilt of his giant ass. Oftentimes, driven to the ends of our nerves by all the heat and strife already, we flip out, honk and scream at him, with lashing words and foaming saliva. Aha: Another day, in LA.

My own rage is so powerful, at times, it scares me:

What if I don’t manage to come back to the saner side again? What if I go way too far?

They had just erected a significant palace of yoga, precisely at that one intersection, where most of us are ready to lose our minds. (And those people granting us our justice: Why aren’t they granting it at that specific spot in the city?!)

On the other side of the street sits an ill-used parking lot, permanently fenced in by a giant net. Its neon orange sign reads “FENCES”. No shit! There is never enough parking in this city, and there is never enough space. Or, there is too much space — and not enough humanity.

But then, again, no one ever promised this city would all make any sense. No one ever promised for it — to be just.

And maybe, that is why it’s always so much harder to come back here, every time: Because we tread at the very end of our nerves, due to all the heat and strife, and some of us go way too far.

The white-haired man was walking slowly; and that was somewhat unusual, of course. But then again, he was nearing that one police station in Hollywood, where quite a few of my acquainted restless souls have spent a night or two, after losing their minds a little. Maybe he was someone’s DUI lawyer; or perhaps, he was delivering someone else’s bail. As he neared the pedestrian walkway, with the quickly expiring countdown on the other side, he began to squint his eyes: Eleven, ten, nine…

(And did I mention he was wearing glasses, with an elegant metallic rim? Yep: Definitely, an important somebody!)

“Ohhh… Ohhh, nooo!” he suddenly began to cry, quietly, almost under his breath. He wound up each word in a register unsuitable for a dignified, white-haired man, like him.

He stepped out onto the road and began to cross. Seven, six, five… He crossed right in front of my windshield.

“Ohhh, nooo!” He squinted again. “They took my car… Oh!”

I looked in the direction of his grief. The curbs in front of that one police station, in Hollywood, were completely empty. It was that time of the day when the rules demanded for us to give each other more space.

“They took my car…” The white-haired man continued, and in the way he stumbled onto the pavement at the end of his walkway, I thought he was way too close to collapsing on his feet: Way too close to his insanity — as he had gone way too far.

“I can’t take this — anymore…” he wept.

It separated inside of me and dropped — some dark feeling that comes from suspecting that nothing in the world had promised to be just. And that departure of my own hope scared me: What’s life — without hope?

Someone honked behind me: The light had changed, and I had to give them way. I had to give them enough space to pass into the lives that stressed them out ahead.

What else is there to do, my darling, but to keep on going: to keep on living?

You won’t even preoccupy yourself with the choice to stop until you’ve known some despair. And there will be despair, in life, no matter how well I try to divert it, my darling.

It will strike you in the midst of a loss and eat up all the light illuminating the rest of your way. It will challenge the clarity of your dreams. Sometimes, you’ll feel like you’ve lost it: this fleeting certainty about having a meaning, a purpose, in life.

“What is all this for, anyway?” you’ll ask yourself (although I do so very much hope that you will ask me first).

Despair is terrifying like that: It aims at hope. It’s quiet and dark. It’s not like rage that clouds your vision with a rebellion against a collective sense of injustice. Instead, it grovels. It hungers. It reaches for things in mere hope of someone’s last minute mercy. And it dwells in sad corners of rented apartments where the faint smell of previous residents can’t help but remind you of irrelevance; of passing.

Because everything passes, my darling, and every-one.

Everything passes — and this, too, shall pass.

Oh, how often I’ve wondered about what you will be like! I try not to commit too much hubris at fantasizing about the color of your eyes, or the structure of your hair, or the shade of your skin. But I have an idea, I think; and I hunt for it in the faces of other people’s children.

I try to restrain myself from predicting your gender. In my younger day, I thought that most certainly you would be born a girl. It was my duty, I thought, as a woman, to give way — to another woman. I had already done it enough for plenty of others: for the women I love or barely even know. I never competed with my gender. Instead, I devoted my life to making up for their difficulty of being born female.

It’s idealistic, I know, and a bit of a cliche. It makes me into an easy target for those who could not find other ways of expressing their fears — but to tear down a woman’s self-esteem. And so they did. Some had succeeded, my darling, but not all; and not for long. For I had shaken most of them off, by now; then spent the rest of my years repairing myself — with goodness.

Because what else is there to do, my darling, but to keep on going?

As a young woman, I was sure that I would make a better mother to one of my own kind. I would devote the rest of my life to making up for the difficulty of your having been born a girl: making it up to you, for life. For your life, my darling.

But then, I had to love enough — and to lose enough loves — to open my mind to letting you be. You may be a son, after all: a boy whom I would teach to never be afraid.

May you never-ever be afraid, my darling!

But if you ever were, I would teach you to keep on going — with goodness.

Because sometimes, life is summarized in our perseverance: not just past the dramatic and the painful; but past the mundane, as well. (I, despite my three decades among the living, still haven’t figured out which I find most grueling. But I have known both, my darling — tragedy and survival alike — and I have persevered.)

And what else is there to do, my darling, but to keep on going? to keep on persevering?

Everything passes: Despair, joy, loss and thrill.

But goodness: Goodness must keep on going. It must keep on happening.

So, these days, I no longer imagine your face or your gender; your stride, style, or habits. I don’t fantasize about the way you’ll flip your hair or tilt your chin; then, yank on the threads of my familial lineage. No, no: I don’t daydream about hearing the echos of my mother’s laughter in yours. I don’t pray for accidental manners that will bring back the long forgotten memories of my self.

No, my darling: I’ll just let you determine all of that on your own.

Instead, now, I spend my days thinking of your character: The temperament you’ll inherit and the choices you’ll learn to make. For that is exactly what I owe you, the most: To teach you goodness, my darling.

It shouldn’t be too hard, from the start; because everyone is born good. But it is my responsibility to teach you goodness in the face of adversity; in the face of despair, despite the collective sense of injustice from other people.

So, I shall teach you goodness as a way of persevering.

Because you must, my darling: You must persevere. And you must never-ever be afraid!

You are still thinking of that person who has mishandled you, who has mistreated, misunderstood it all — someone who has committed a sad misstep. But, of course, you think of him! How could he?!

But time happens. It keeps on happening. That just can’t be helped.

And as the time happens, his misstep seems sadder and sadder. But it’s rarely tragic, really — if you look at it hard enough. It may be chaotic, self-serving, unfair. Foolish and hideous. Confusing. Unkind.

But in the end, it’s just sadder. Especially if you commit yourself — to forgiveness.

For a while, his face floats above your head like a helium filled balloon, tied to the shoulder strap of your luggage. And you lug it around: Because these — are your “things”, you see. And you feel like you’ve gotta keep holding onto them. You’ve gotta keep holding on! Because what would you be — if it weren’t for your “things”?

So, the balloon keeps following you, floating above — a strangely pretty thing: The head of a decapitated ghost. If you look at it closely enough — it’s quite beautiful, actually, in that post-fuck-up sort of a way. You can still see the beloved’s face. You remember the cause of your love. But there is also a tiredness there that can be confused for peace. And there are consequences that may result in grace, eventually — when the time allows.

You just gotta commit yourself to time.

You just gotta commit yourself — to forgiveness.

But you aren’t ready yet. Or so you say. So you keep lugging the luggage around, earning calluses on your shoulders:

“These are my ‘things’, you see!”

“Oh, yes! How could he?!” others respond.

At first, you are selective with the audience to your story. Perhaps, you’ll tell it to your shrink, or to your folks. When you do, there will be grief written on their faces.

Okay, maybe the shrink will remain stoic: She’s got too many of you’s — and many more are worse off than you. But your folks: They might humor you. They’ll feel badly. They’ll behold. They’ll even claim to pray, on your behalf. (You’re too busy to pray for yourself, with all that condemnation being flaunted at the balloon-face. But don’t worry: Your gods will forgive you for forsaking them (and for forsaking your better self), until you’re ready to commit yourself — to forgiveness.)

“How could he?!” your folks will say.

And it’ll feel good, for a while: all this attention to your story. To your “things”. So, you’ll start telling the story to your friends.

They are good people — your friends, aren’t they? They will leap to conclusions and advice. They’ll take your side, if their definition of friendship matches yours. But some will judge. Others will hold back. And some will even want to share their story, because to them, that’s how empathy works: It gives space — to their sadder, sadder stories that aren’t really tragic. Except, when you (or they) are in the midst of the story, tragedy is a lot more precise. It matches the weight of the “things”.

You may get annoyed at your friends. You may disagree. You may even demand more kindness. Or more time.

Because time — keeps on happening. That just can’t be helped.

And you wish, it would move at a slower pace, sometimes.

And, okay, you just may get a little bit more of it, if you keep retelling your story to enough new people.

“How could he?!” they’ll say.

And you’ll get off, for a bit. (Feel better yet?)

One day, though, you’ll catch yourself in the midst of sadness. You’ll be showing your “things”, the way you always do, waiting for the “How could he?!” to follow. Your habitual anticipation of likely reactions will suddenly feel tired. You — will be tired.

A thought will flash:

“I don’t know if I wanna keep lugging this ‘thing’ around, anymore…”

His face — still floating, hanging above your head like something that used to belong to your favorite ghost — will seem slightly deflated. Sadder — NOT tragic.

Still, you will keep lugging. For a bit more, you will. You still need more time.

You’ve started this thing, and the ripple waves of gossip and misinterpreted empathies will keep coming in, for a bit longer. But they won’t bring you any more catharsis. And as you keep retelling the story (which will now sound a lot more fragmented), you’ll notice your people lingering:

“Isn’t it time yet?” they’ll ask you with the corners of their saddened eyes.

There are days when the ego wakes up early on me, and like a petulant child nagging his mother for junk food in line at a supermarket, it gets going before I decide to open my eyes and admit to the start of a new day:

“But, but, but…” it whines, throws fits and manipulates itself into more convenient emotions — the junk food for the human spirit:

– Contempt: That one always promises to be easier; but so obvious its wastefulness, I haven’t tried my hand at it — EVER!

– Anger: A real dilettante, claiming its expertise when leading to solutions; but then, it always runs out of air on me, long before the finish line. Oh, but it has tempted me enough times to have learned my lesson, by now; so, I don’t follow its lead.

– Expectation of justice: I might as well resign to never allow another human to affect me, because such an expectation — is a moot point, fo’ sure; and it certainly cannot be an objective in any of my actions.

– Self-pity: I’m altogether allergic to that sucker, so I haven’t seen its face around here, for ages. Same goes for jealousy: In my universe, it’s a leper I prefer to keep at ten-foot distance.

But take this morning: I woke up tired.

“First of all: I am tired. I am true of heart!

And also: You are tired. You’re true of heart!” *

So, that must be a starting point, for most of us. A common ground, eh? Perhaps, that is why many prefer to be in love; for in those glorious beginnings of an affair, it gives you reasons to get up. Exhaustion does not seem to matter.

(The work? The work surely comes later. The ghosts come out to play:

“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man…”

The patterns play hide-and-go-seek for a while; but when the lovers lose their libido at trying to impress each other, the hidden qualities crawl out:

“You’re it!”

So, in comes the work.)

But take this morning: I woke up tired — and not in love, with another. For a while, I tossed my exhausted limbs in bed and dismissed the temptations of the ego to start weaving its through-line for this new day. I checked the phone: No visible commitments. Where to start, I thought.

How about: I start with gratitude?

So, I got up, mostly out of habit, got the coffee going. The first obvious choice of action — was to clear the space. I’m in control of it, this year — my space; but even that takes some discipline. Because I no longer can blame any outer — or inner — clutter on my bunkmate. My space equals my freedom equals my problem. My responsibility.

“It’s a question of discipline. When you’ve finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet.” **

And so, I did that, mostly out of habit, but secretly letting the faces of my beloveds slip into my memory. Perhaps, they were in the things that I shifted around my space. These things either tended to originate from all my loves or to lead me back to them, in unpredictable ways:

There was that one, on the furthest coast, who mattered the most — she was heard from, yesternight: She always justified my love. My brothers, scattered all over the continent because they are that much restless of a kind — they all came forth throughout the last few days. The lovelies in this city, where, for whatever reason, it’s much easier to get distracted: They too made their adoration for me audible.

And then, there was a boy: A boy from last night, who with his youth and beauty, insisted that even though I was tired — I was true of heart:

“I thought you were really cool,” he said, sitting underneath a yellow light on the floor of his hallway. “But I didn’t know you’d be so different.”

(He would later make me laugh, make me lighter; tease me, teach me; make me sit still — underneath the yellow light, on the floor of his hallway — while respecting my tiredness. He was not a love. Not yet. But oh, so lovely he was, in this city where, for whatever reason, it’s so much easier to get distracted. Perhaps, it was the late hour of the night… (Or was it the early hour of the morning? I never know the difference.) Perhaps it was the late hour of the night, but the mutual ghosts did not come to play:

“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man…”

But I was already too tired and true of heart — too wise, beyond my years — to not notice the patterns peeking out their turned-up noses from underneath the door of his apartment.)

But take this morning: I woke up tired, not in love with another, but slowly, seemingly in love — with so many. I continued to shift things around, organizing the space, getting ready to do my daily work. Slowly, the sleepiness evaporated. The exhaustion — suddenly didn’t matter.

I was loved, I thought, or at least adored — by many. And they were all so magnificent: These hearts, equally tired and true, searching for something just a little better than survival. And whenever they chose to remember me, they gave me reasons to get up. My tribe. My comrades. My witnesses. My better selves. They made me matter, rebuilding me every single time I was too tired to start a new day:

“What’s it all for?” a comrade of mine and a regular reader of my rant blog was interviewing me last night in the midst of a chaotic nightspot filled with beautiful children at play. “I mean: Why are you doing it?”

When I started self-publishing my words on the first of this year, I had already been writing on a daily basis — for years. Years, my magnificent reading eyes! As a child, I was always the smallest creature in every classroom, quietly and perpetually jotting things down in my journals. Motha blamed it on my lack of siblings; but I think: I was just meant to write.

I am story collector, you see. In the fashion of my motha’s nomadic people, I’ve bounced all over the world, passing by tragedies — sometimes getting caught in them — then retelling those tales, to a human ear or to an empty page. Why else would I be granted a life that has made me a witness to dozens of world-changing events of the current and the last century? And if that weren’t enough: Why would I be given a hand of lacking a home — or a home country — or a family, or any other predictability, or insurance? (These are valid questions, my comrades, although I am no longer seeking an answer.)

Since my landing in LA-LA six years ago, writing became more of a regimented daily activity; and when this Russian says “daily,” she means, “every bloody day.”

(Well, to be more precise, she actually means:

“Fuck my birthdays, fuck your birthdays! Fuck national holidays and vacations! Life’s too short! Do something about it!” Which makes V — an intense lil’ cunt on a mission; but y’all already starting to pick-up on that, I suspect.)

But not until my good-hearted and boyish comrade’s interview last night had I actually formulated the objective of my rant blog:

“Well, I want to make a living at art,” I said; but judging by my comrade’s face, I quickly realized I was being all Russian-mysterious and overall too vague for his American ear. So, I elaborated. “If this thing takes off as a column or a paid blog, with a steady following — great! A book deal? Even better!”

My comrade was beginning to nod. Phew! At least, I was on the right track of being understood — an event of rarity in my daily life.

“So, you’re trying to make money?” he said.

The socialist in me got a bit uncomfortable with being simplified this way, so I had to grope for my own balls — just to remember I still had some:

“Well… Yes! I want to be a working artist.But I also revel in the act of DOING it. You know?”

He didn’t know. My boyish friend still looked as if I was breaking down the gist of quantum physics for him, but I found myself somewhat surprised at the sound of my objective: To do art — for the sake of doing it. Sounds romantic, doesn’t it?

Now, don’t get me wrong: I am fully fed-up with taking on endless, completely random and often hectic survival gigs. I’ve had it with the tedious, mind-numbing office jobs, and restaurant jobs; and Shiva knows: I’ve had enough of the self-abuse that comes from having to report to gigs where I’ll be lectured or patronized or, what’s worse, perpetually jammed into a box of a more convenient category by employers with bored or fearful mindsets. So, yes: I am ready to get paid for my art!

But what makes the grind of survival much more tolerable is that, in the very act of creating MY ART — it feels like the best life I could possibly ask for.

Last night’s conversation with my comrade got stuck with me for long enough to bring it home; and despite having had such a day — to call it day, I’ve kept myself awake by watching this tribute to Sidney Lumet:

Allow me to recap the words I wish I had the wisdom to pass on to my boyish comrade (but then, I think he’d already had plenty of my intensity by now):

Reporter Tim Weiner: “How do you want to be remembered?”

Sidney Lumet: “I don’t give a shit!”

TW: “But what about the work?”

SL: “It’ll make its own way. Nothing I can do about it any more. [But] I’d like somebody to take notice of that… That I wasn’t afraid.”

And here is my favorite part, my lovelies; the part that I am only now starting to get the balls to admit to myself. Because, as I have written this late morning to my lover (oh, but I do so like quoting myself!), who’s currently three time zones away from my heart: Life — is chaos. We try to slow it down by making sense of it, and sometimes by demanding justice (and that, more often than not, leaves us disappointed.) The better route to commemorate a life or a person — is, but of course, with love. We, artists, do it by commemorating completely random happenings of beauty; and it does take courage and fearlessness to commit a lifetime to doing it. And thusly, we live:

SL: “I don’t think art changes anything. I do it because I like it — and it’s a wonderful way to spend your life.”

Does that answer your question, my young-hearted comrade? Oh, and look at that: You’ve just been commemorated. Yourr velkom.

While you’re dreaming out your dreams and rebooting before the start of yet another day — god willing! — I’ve been greeting the sun for you. (No worries: It’s not up yet; but when it is, I shall relay the tales of your magnificence.)

And when you do wake, my lovelies, I hope you take the time — I pray you have the time — to tread the ground with baby steps: rediscovering gravity and balance, not anticipating the next footstep and never missing the ones you’ve already left behind. Hold the ground, my darlings, with every step. Hold your bloody ground! Hug it with the arches of your soles and it will return you — to your self. But then, with the next footstep — let go! Somewhere in mid-flight, each foot may find the thrill of courage, and you just may grow a little.

Baby steps, babies!

May you have the patience and the surrender to move at the speed this day will ask of you. May you keep your eyes on the horizon — for your dreams also arise there, slowly, like the sun, while gradually granting more light to your path. But if today, you must trip or fall down — no biggie! Tell your ego to hush-up with its routine embarrassments and other gratuitous tortures, dust yourself off, and keep on — with baby steps.

(Look at that! The sky is fully lit by now, but the sun is still coyly hiding behind the mountain. It’s taking taking its time. Baby steps.)

There was a girl the other day — a woman stranger — who walked into a cafe like any other in LA-LA-LA; but the familiar moves of opening the door, stepping in, negotiating her space in line — she committed them with awareness and authenticity. Oh, she was luminous! With not a touch of make-up on her calm face, with her liberated, shoulder-length hair and a simple black jumpsuit that hugged enough of her curvatures and hid the others, she was reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn’s grace and Diane Lane’s sexuality.

The line-up of anonymous writers typing out their dreams at the wall-long booth of the joint stopped in mid-action:

“Who in the world is that?” — we all wondered; then proceeded rummaging through our scripts to fit her in… Well, at least, that’s what I did.

But the girl remained. That’s just it: She remained. (Baby steps!) Patiently, with her hands in the pockets of her jumpsuit, she waited for her turn; then for her drink, then a table; then for her girlfriends, who arrived in a pack, with confusion and noise in tow.

“Oh my gosh, hon!” one of the creatures whined, refusing to adjust to the general volume at which the rest of us operated there. “You look so… cute!”

My Diane Lane was already standing, sincerely leaning into the other women’s embraces while letting the loudmouth to henpeck at her appearance. “Thank you,” she said.

“What’s this you’re wearing?” the whiny broad insisted on being loud. “Is this — OH MY GOSH! — is this a jumpsuit?!”

“Yes. Yes, it is,” the Diane Lane reminiscence said and smiled, ever so lovely.

Wow. Mesmerized. I was utterly mesmerized. All of us were. The gray-haired Morgan-Freeman-esque writer next to me scoffed, and at noticing my gaze, shook his head and hung it low: Alas, humanity. The other women in the group reshuffled either themselves or the chairs around the picnic table; but the loudmouth was still on a trip of her own:

“I wish I could wear that!” She obviously had some beef with the injustice of her life, her body — her self.

With not a hint of bitchiness or self-defense in her voice, “You can,” said my Lane.

Okay. Hold-up here! Is this: GRACE? Well, yes. Yes, it is. The grace of self-awareness and forgiveness… Actually, come to think of it (come to recall it), my Diane Lane movedas if she had nothing to forgive. The pebbles of insecurity that the other woman hurled at our lovely girl bounced off, seemingly leaving not a scratch behind, then obeyed gravity and landed at her feet. And my Lane remained unscathed, unaffected, unbruised; even lovelier after having to insist on her kindness. That’s just it. She remained: light and weightless, causing no damage on Earth. She held herself up, never bracing herself out of fear or injustice; treading carefully and kindly, as if this day — was the very first for her to discover. Baby steps.